Virgin and Child with Six Angels, mid 15th century

Cast from a model by Luca della Robbia

Sir John Pope-Hennessey, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and renowned scholar of the Italian Renaissance, remembered seeing this small roundel at the home of the humanitarian Violet Mond, Baroness Melchett (1867â1945), and thinking it looked âgood and genuine.â In 1971, the worn areas of the glaze and losses in the fired clay he had seen on the relief had disappeared under a layer of terracotta-colored paint and plaster. This was apparently done âto produce a more acceptable and even surface,â in Pope-Hennesseyâs words. Mr. Simon took Pope-Hennesseyâs advice and had a conservator remove these accretions, revealing the surface visible today. There remained, however, uncertainty about the attribution to Luca della Robbia, or even whether it might be a later copy, as many such roundels exist.

In 2012, thermoluminescence analysis was performed on powdered samples taken from the roundel, yielding a result consistent with a mid-fifteenth-century firing date. This new information supports the inclusion of the Norton Simon roundel with other copies Wilhelm von Bode attributed to Luca in 1900.